


The Burning Circle of Our Days

by laventadorn



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: F/F, Sibling Incest, doing some world-building, post movie-verse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-29
Packaged: 2018-01-16 15:30:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1352506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laventadorn/pseuds/laventadorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elsa dreams night after night of Anna turning to ice beneath a flickering curtain of light, in a world of eternal winter. Is it a nightmare of her past? A warning from the future? No; it is the promise of a legacy stretching back generations, to the first ice sorcerer of Arendelle, who is coming home with an army of the frozen dead, to claim what is rightfully his.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Shattered Window

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this fic came about when I said to my friends, "Frozen fic idea: GRRM's ice zombies come to Arendelle and Elsa kicks ice zombie ass." And friends said I'D READ THAT. So this isn't Westeros, but there will be ice zombies. And royal sibling incest. (Don't worry, though, you won't need to have read A Song of Ice and Fire or seen Game of Thrones to understand anything.)
> 
> The title, "The Burning Circle of Our Days," is adapted from William Butler Yeats' poem The Two Trees.

Elsa did not dream.

She never had. And for many years she hadn't known there were such things as dreams that lived in the depths of sleep. Her parents had never told her about them. Perhaps it had simply never occurred to them that Elsa would be different in that way, too; perhaps it had been yet another measure of concealment. But until she was grown, Elsa thought "dreams" was only the word for the wishes of your heart.

But then she read—some time in the endless, empty days after she'd lost her parents to the sea—about dreams that came to you when you slept. Years later, when they no longer did-not-speak through closed doors, she asked Anna if she had that kind of dream.

"Oh, sure," Anna said, digging into a strawberry tart. "I had one last night that I was riding on the back of a flying horse. Do you think there are _really_ flying horses?"

"Possibly." If there were dreams you only had when you were sleeping, there could easily be horses that flew. "Do you dream often?"

Anna had icing on the tip of her nose. "Every night, mostly. Do you—you've really never dreamed?"

She looked curious, rather than fearful, but anything that set Elsa apart touched her own heart with unease. She shook her head as she wiped the icing off Anna's nose, feeling herself smile when Anna grinned at her. Her heart beat hard, twice, in her chest, and she wondered what it meant that she did not dream at all.

Never. Not once. From the moment she slipped into sleep to the moment she woke, the world of her night was dark—not empty like a void, but calm and peaceful like black water beneath a starless sky.

Why did she not dream? Was it to do with her magic? Did her powers block them out?

"We'll ask Kristoff's family," Anna suggested brightly. But when they'd driven their sleigh, with Anna bundled up against the early spring frost, to the snowy grotto, the trolls said they had never heard of anyone who did not dream—though, they admitted, it had been a long time since they had met a human who could shape the powers of the earth. And the last time they had, they hadn't thought to ask him about dreams.

Elsa knew whom they were talking of and distracted Anna with the promise of hot chocolate back home. He was best left forgotten by those who knew of him and unknown to those who did not.

Especially to Anna.

Elsa began sending for books from every kingdom nearby, and increasingly from those farther and farther away: books on dreams and magic and sleeping; books that were as dry and dusty to the mind as to the touch; books that held no answers at all.

"Maybe you just don't remember dreaming," Anna said, looking the books that spread across every surface in Elsa's study—tables, chairs, floor, even the windowsill. A glint of disquiet in her eyes made the parchment beneath Elsa's fingers crackle with frost.

"There's a lot I know I don't remember," Anna went on, picking up a book in Maldonian and (unknowingly) looking at it upside-down. "And they're really very silly, anyway—last night I went swimming with a herd of pink elephants. Do you think there are pink elephants, really?"

"Maybe." It was hard not to smile when Anna asked questions like that. Elsa delicately closed the book she'd nearly frozen. "What will you dream of next? Pink elephants that can fly?"

Anna's smile was quick, touched with relief. "Maybe."

"Where do you go?" Elsa asked her. Anna blinked. "In your dream—where do you fly?"

"Sometimes I fly over the mountains—sometimes over the sea—I see things I've read about, or that are in the paintings. . ."

Anna started telling Elsa about all her dreams after that. It soothed Elsa's inchoate fears, somehow, to hear of Anna's dreams when she did not have her own.

Gradually, the books were taken off the tables and chairs and windowsills and sent to line the shelves of her study and the library. Her nights stayed dark and peaceful, but before she slept she thought of Anna flying over fjords and forests, into the living sky. She found a different kind of peace in that. If only one of them had to dream, it was better that it was Anna, whose heart was full of light and warmth. What if Elsa's dreams were lonely and dark and jagged like spears of ice?

And for a time, everything was well.

Until Anna had a nightmare.

* * *

"Elsa?"

Elsa was awake in one moment to the next, like Anna's half-whisper had the weight of a shout.

Anna stood next to the bed, clutching her dressing gown closed, holding a candle that snuffed out when Elsa looked at her. She would rather have the power of ice than of fire—ice could thaw, whereas ash could not be made whole again—but sometimes it would be more convenient to light a candle on a whim.

But if she could snuff a candle with one stray beat of her heart, she did not want to think about the power of fire.

"What is it?" Now she could see Anna only by the light of the moon. Pushing back the covers, she reached for the matchbox she kept in her bedside table. The match, though, snuffed out as soon as it was lit. Elsa made a frustrated noise.

"Here, I'll do it," Anna said, and even in the feeble light Elsa could hear the smile in her voice.

Anna lit both their candles and set hers beside Elsa's on the bedside table. Then she perched on the edge of the bed and fidgeted.

"What is it?" Elsa repeated, when Anna only kept wrapping a stray thread, come loose from her dressing gown's embroidery, around and around and around her finger.

"I. . . had a bad dream."

Elsa blinked. "A nightmare." She'd always known about nightmares, too, even before she knew that wasn't a term only for what you feared would come to pass.

"Yeah. . . just a stupid one, though." Anna smiled again, or something like it, but Elsa knew she had her own way of concealing.

Elsa frowned. "What happened?"

"I. . ." Anna started winding the thread faster. "Nothing."

Elsa tried to keep her voice gentle. "It can't be nothing or you wouldn't have come."

Anna peeped at Elsa past the unmarred hair that fell over her eye. "Well, that's the important thing, isn't it? That I came here."

Elsa was confused. "Is it?"

Anna nodded fervently, twisting the loose thread so that part of the design popped loose. "So—so the dream isn't important, it's what happened after I. . . woke up from it. You see?"

On the beside table, the closest candle guttered, then went dark. Anna pressed her lips together.

"Elsa. . ."

"You had a nightmare about me."

"No," Anna said forcefully. "Not about _you_ , about. . . a winter that wouldn't end. I read it in a book, that's all! Elsa—"

Ice was whispering across the sheets, up the posters of Elsa's bed, chipping down from the canopy. _Control it, control it_ —Elsa thought, but she saw the moonlight shattering on the icicles, and when Anna breathed out her breath clouded the air. . .

Anna grabbed her hand. Elsa's heart twisted as she imagined the ice traveling up Anna's arm and across her face, and she tried wrenching herself away, but Anna wouldn't let go. She tried to shake her other hand free of her dressing gown so she could hold on with both hands, but the thread was wrapped around her finger so that she couldn't get it loose.

"Oh, butternut _fudge_!" she cried, and the picture she made was so silly, with her hair tufted out of her braid like that and her finger caught in her own dressing gown, that some of the panic in Elsa's chest thawed.

"Which book was this?"

"It was something about the history of Arendelle. I found it in your study. You don't read stuff like that all the time, do you? Because it was pretty bleak, and if you're always reading stuff like that it's no wonder that you. . . um. . ." She glanced at the bed, whose tall, sturdy frame glittered in the silver light.

Elsa did not feel capable of thawing it yet, so she ushered Anna into her sitting-room and shut the door on the cold.

"A History of Magic in the Wild North?" she asked calmly as Anna untangled her finger from her dressing-gown.

"Probably. It was full of some rather nasty people." She frowned, and Elsa thought that if the author of that book had still been alive, Anna might have sent him a strongly worded but very polite letter that he ought to write something a bit nicer. "Surely you've got to have some books on _good_ magic."

"It's a history book, Anna. Good deeds are rarely recorded in them."

Judging by Anna's expression, she was going to spend tomorrow afire with the ambition to become a historian who wrote about only _nice_ things (until supper intervened and her attention was caught by dessert).

"And magic. . ." Elsa wanted to shiver, but years of training repressed it. Cold never bothered her, but there were things more paralyzing than ice. "Magic comes with a price."

Anna looked at her, for once not biting her lip or wringing her hands. It was a serious, grown up look; a reminder of the price they had already paid.

"A price," Elsa said quietly, "that you have to keep on paying."

* * *

Elsa wasn't far off the mark.

The next day, Anna dragged her to the library, a large, airy, open room their father had had newly built for her as a gift for her thirteenth birthday, to try and ease her loneliness. To an extent, it had worked. The high ceilings and rows of windows that ran from floorboards to eaves had given her a room full of light, and the books had, for a time, breathed companionship into her life. But it had not lasted. Any book worth being read would at some point make your eyes turn from the page and seek a view of the outside world, wondering if the same adventures lay beyond the glass, waiting for you to find them. In the end, every book in this endless, empty, echoing room had been a reminder of what she could never have.

Anna cleared her throat. Without realizing it, Elsa had drifted to the windows and stood looking across the fjord, toward the horizon, her breath crystallizing on the glass. Turning, she tried to school her expression. . .

And lost the battle at the sight of Anna striking a triumphant pose in front of a governess' board on which she had pinned a large, blindingly pink banner:

The Good Things Magic Can Do!

"Right," she said, her expression alight with the mix of determination and zeal that she normally reserved for chocolate-on-chocolate cake with strawberries. "This is what's going to happen. I'm going to fill up this board! You watch me."

Elsa had read every book in the castle—the library, her parents' studies, and all the volumes she'd added since becoming queen. She knew there was nothing like what Anna was looking for. Magic was dark and dangerous, a temptation to evil, an imbalance of the natural order. The only good that had ever come of it had been due to Anna, when Elsa had wanted to delight her. Perhaps other sorcerers, the ones who had not made it into the books as conquerors or eaters of children or enslavers, who had not been driven from their homes by hatred—perhaps they had had their Annas. But building snowmen and ice-skates for your little sister wouldn't make it into books.

Still, Elsa's heart seemed suddenly too small for the fondness inside it.

"Wouldn't you rather go skating?" she asked. "Or we could have a snowball fight—through the whole castle."

Anna's face lit up, but then she pursed her lips and shook her head. "No no no no, _no_. This is _important_ , Elsa. Magic isn't bad, it's being scared of things that's bad for you."

 _There is beauty in it, but also great danger._ "Magic makes things. . . more," she said quietly. "More dangerous. More fearful. It's easier to do damage with magic."

"Then it's easier to do good, too," Anna said firmly.

Elsa saw that she would not convince her. But she couldn't watch Anna rifle through book after book, finding nothing like what she believed, only endless reports of treachery and terror.

So she excused herself, burying the pang she felt when Anna's face fell—frosting the doorknob as she let herself out—and went to the kitchens instead. She asked the cook if she wouldn't prepare Princess Anna's favorite strawberry cake with chocolate icing for dinner that night.

Anna would need a lift, after being so disappointed. Elsa had had years to understand the danger she herself posed.

Anna. . . had not.

There was a difference between being hurt once, and knowing it could happen again.

But Anna did not come up for dinner.

Elsa ate alone at the table spread with untouched dishes, the moonlight of early autumn glittering on the frost that spread across the cloth. She stopped the ice before it covered Anna's cake, but let the rest of the food freeze solid.

When she had eaten all she could of her cold soup, she stood, picked up the cake plate, and left the informal dining room for the library. The lamps struck notes of brightness in the depths of shadow and silver, and in a pool of buttery-yellow light, she found Anna, surrounded by towers of books.

And sleeping, using a book as a pillow and drooling a bit on the page.

Feeling herself smiling, Elsa set the cake down on the table and brushed Anna's bangs back from her face. Anna's eyes fluttered open. She smiled sleepily when she saw who it was, and then scrunched her nose.

"Ow," she said as she raised her head, wincing. "When'd I fall asleep?"

"I don't know. You missed dinner. But I brought you the most important part."

"Dessert?" Anna brightened when she saw the cake, the chocolate decorated with strawberries and whorls of pink icing. "Ooh, that's my favorite!"

"I know."

Elsa moved the books and scrolls out of the way as Anna dug in, not even bothering with the extra plate Elsa had brought. If ice was Elsa's power, Anna's was the ability to get chocolate absolutely everywhere.

Elsa recognized a lot of the books Anna had brought down: not histories, but the stories of the sort you told children, with trolls, fairies, mermaids, selkies, and dragons; stories of the making of the earth and sea and sky; men that changed into bears, foxes that trapped you with tricks and riddles, the sacred herds of immortal beings; women who turned into owls and feasted on the flesh of the dead and of harpies that hounded the guilty unto madness.

"I thought you would be looking at history," Elsa said, surprised.

"I thought I'd learn about what magic was like, first. Strawberry?" She held one out on a chocolatey fork.

Elsa picked it off the tine and bit it in half, savoring the chocolate. She flipped through the storybook, lingering on the watercolor of mermaids streaming on their backs beneath the surface of the water.

"This reminds me of tales I've read about the afterlife," she said. "How some peoples believe it is an ocean. The souls of the dead swim forever, unable to find shore."

She glanced up at Anna, to see how she was taking this morbidity, and saw that for some reason Anna had gone bright red.

"You're not choking, are you?" Elsa asked, alarmed.

Anna shook her head rapidly. "N-no," she said, stuffing another bite of cake into her mouth. "Ei'm finef."

"Did I upset you?"

Anna shook her head even harder. "Fine," she wheezed. "You're—fine. Um. That's—interesting, about the dead people. I. . . don't think I'd want to go swimming there."

Elsa smiled slightly and finished her strawberry. "No."

"Um," said Anna. "Um. I did—look at this one. History book, I mean. About—about the royal family in Arendelle."

She was blushing, her eyes darting from Elsa's shoulder, then across the room, then back to Elsa's hairline, then up to the ceiling.

"Ah." The moonlight, the lamps, shone suddenly too bright. Elsa closed her eyes.

"You've—read that one before?" Anna asked, her voice a bit higher than normal.

"Yes." She tried not to breathe. "You mentioned the man last night. The one who was. . . like me."

There was a pause. When Anna spoke, she sounded. . . confused? "The—oh! Right, yes. Um. I—couldn't finish that one. It was. . . too horrible. What happened."

 _What he did_ , Elsa thought.

"But no, I was talking about. . . um." Anna shifted, her chair creaking. "The, er, the way the royal family, er. . . used to marry, um. . ."

When Anna's words gave out, Elsa finally opened her eyes. Anna's face was so red that she immediately understood.

"The marrying of brothers and sisters?" (Anna nodded jerkily.) "You didn't know?" (She shook her head so hard that her braids flapped.) "Well, it was a very old practice. In the beginning the kingdom was very weak, after all, and they intermarried to keep bloodlines pure and outsiders from gaining influence."

"Er," Anna said. "Ah. Why'd—they stop?"

"It was after the same man we were talking of. Kleykir. The one with powers like mine." Elsa felt the arms of her chair starting to chip with ice. "The one who. . ."

Anna put her hand over Elsa's and squeezed. Her hand was warm and her grip was firm, and if she was still blushing a little, her gaze was steady and her smile did not waver.

"The one who tried usurping his brother's crown," Elsa said. The ice was receding, as if Anna's touch had the power to thaw it. "Is any of this familiar?"

"A bit." Anna frowned. "I seem to remember Bera—that was my tutor, you know—saying we don't talk about him? Or don't say his name—or something."

"Correct. Kleykir isn't his real name. He was the Disgraced."

Anna was looking at her in that serious way again. Her fingers curled around Elsa's, until she turned her palm over so that they were holding hands, rather than Anna simply holding onto hers.

"When did you learn about him?" Anna asked quietly.

"In a book that Father did not know held any mention of him. He was careful to keep all of that away from me." She remembered turning the book to ice and breaking it in half, demanding he bring her every book he had hidden about Kleykir the Disgraced, the terrible man who'd been just like her. "He and Mother. . . didn't want me knowing. But when I found that one whisper of him, I knew I had to hear the whole. Father hunted up every scrap of knowledge about him, for me. It was not much. What little was kept was in the event of. . . a child like me being born."

Anna's searching look was almost suspicious. "Do you mean a child with ice powers, or a child who might grow up like him?"

"It makes little difference—"

"It makes _all_ the difference." Anna gripped her hand harder. "Elsa, you ran _away_ rather than hurt anyone. The winter happened because you didn't know how to control it, but now you do. He froze Arendelle so his brother would have to give up the kingdom to him—isn't that what the magic book said? He froze the kingdom so badly that hundreds of people died within a few _hours_."

Elsa remembered. She didn't dream, but the words penned by stoic historians had writ themselves on her mind, so that if she closed her eyes, she could still see them.

"I didn't have to threaten anyone to become queen."

Anna looked incredulous. "Right. You have all the power in the world—more than he did. You have magic, and you're a _queen_. You could do whatever you want! And what you do is read books and sit on council meetings and build snow forts with me and make sure everyone has enough food and firewood and blankets during the winter so they never go hungry and cold. Do you think that awful man would have done any of that?"

Elsa couldn't help smiling at the burning indignation in Anna's face. "As he's been dead for three hundred years, I don't suppose I could ask him."

"Well, I bet he wouldn't have. You don't try to kill someone and take their kingdom because you want to do nice things for people." A shadow passed across her face; a memory almost a year old. It was Elsa's turn to squeeze her hand. It chased the shadow away, or at least gave Anna the strength to hide it.

"You were asking about the family intermarriages," Elsa said, to take her mind off that.

"Oh." Anna went strawberry red again. "Yeah. That, um. Surprised me."

"They were discontinued after that. Well, the surviving brother didn't have any sisters, so he had no choice. He married a princess from another kingdom, and things were quite different there. She was horrified at the idea of her children intermarrying. He met some opposition for discontinuing the tradition, but influential members of his council stood in support of his children finding other spouses. They wondered if his brother's evil hadn't been a sign to put an end to the tradition. In the end, King Vortigen left the decision to his children."

"And they married other people?"

Elsa nodded. "In the beginning, the early princes and princesses were raised to see each other as brother-husband and sister-wife, but King Vortigen's children had not. He hadn't been, nor had his wife. So the practice simply fell away."

"Huh." Anna chewed on her lip. "Papa had a sister, didn't he?"

"Yes. She was married before I was born, to a king who lives to the south. We've never met her."

Anna hmmmm'd. "Well. Good, er. Good to know," she said, blushing some more.

"Why?" Elsa asked, rather confused.

Anna's blush fluctuated through a range of pinks. "Oh, you know. It's just one of those things people say. Have you—ever thought about, um. Getting married? To, you know. People."

"No." When Anna just stared at her, clearly expecting more, Elsa shrugged. "I never expected to be able to. I thought. . . I would always have to hide."

"And—now?"

"I don't think I shall marry, no."

Anna looked almost distressed. "Why not?"

Elsa shrugged again. "I've simply not thought about it. Even when I wanted so badly not to be alone, I never thought of being married. Not once. Besides. . ." Still holding Anna's hand, she shook it gently. "I already have my heir."

Anna smiled, but as if her heart weren't truly in it.

"Do you _want_ me to marry?" Elsa asked.

"No," Anna said quickly. "I—no. I just. . . don't want you to think you have to be alone forever because you'll. . . hurt someone."

So Elsa hadn't fooled her. Well, she hadn't lied, either.

"When we are asking the gods to grant our heart's desire," she said, "we ask for what we truly want. And all I ever asked for was you."

Anna stared at her, some incomprehensible emotion in her face.

Elsa extracted her hand from her sister's, feeling suddenly frail. "Let's put these away. You seem to have taken down half the library."

". . . Right," Anna said.

They filed the books away in silence; Elsa knew their places perfectly. She felt embarrassed to have said so much, and yet oddly distressed, as if she had also said too little.

But as they walked upstairs to their rooms, Anna stopped and hugged her tight.

"Good night," she said, almost fiercely. "Sweet dreams."

Then she kissed Elsa's cheek and darted away to her room.

 _Sweet dreams_ , Elsa thought, as the warmth of Anna's embrace and her kiss lingered like dusklight after sunset.

* * *

_The sky was awake._

_The snow was tinted green beneath the moving curtain in the sky and the stars glowed bright and cold in the dark spaces beyond. The snow was flat flat flat and looped from horizon to horizon, unbroken and empty._

_Not empty._

_The man had black hair and black brows flecked with snow. He was young and old at once, with a young man's strength and vigor and an old man's ancient eyes._

_I have been waiting, he said without words._

_Here, where the world is dead yet living, living yet dead._

_You sit upon my throne, queen of my blood._

_Your gifts are my gifts, living scion of my dead brother._

_And I am coming._

* * *

Elsa awoke to a deafening crash.

She sat bolt upright in bed, her breath frosting the air with ragged gasps, and saw her bedroom floor littered with shards of crystallized glass, and the moon shining free and cold on the snowflakes in the air.


	2. Ash on the Wind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -The poem that won't leave Elsa alone is "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost (ha, did he intend that pun, you think? I bet he had a lifetime of them).
> 
> -I mentally adapted Elsa's outfit from what I remember of the genderbent Frozen fanart I've seen on Tumblr. Nothing precise in mind, though there was one where Elsa was still female but wearing male clothing. I just really liked the look :)

"Elsa?"

Anna knocked on Elsa's door when there was no answer. When only silence echoed in reply, she tried the handle.

It didn't give.

She bit her lip. _Drat it all to yesterday, I shouldn't have kissed her. Or asked her about sister-wives. Or the ice guy. Maybe I could just erase ALL of last night and then she'd open the door_ —

The door swung open. She caught a glimpse of Elsa's strained face, her mouth pressed into a flat line, and then she was being dragged into Elsa's sitting-room.

Elsa slammed the door and leaned against it.

"Elsa?" Anna took a step toward her. The room felt colder than usual, but she didn't see any ice. . .

"I broke the window," Elsa whispered, pressing her fist up against her heart.

She pointed toward the bedroom. Anna peered around the door and saw the glass glittering in a pile on the floor. But—where had it come from? The bay-facing window was intact. . .

Except that it wasn't. It was made of ice, not glass: a sheet of faceted ice, reflecting the sunlight.

"That's beautiful," Anna said without thinking, because it was. Everything Elsa created was beautiful.

"Someone will _notice_." Elsa twisted her hands together. "They'll ask me how it broke, and—"

"We'll say it was me," Anna said firmly. "We'll say I threw something and broke it. It'll be fine."

"Except that you're a terrible liar."

Anna turned, pretending to frown, but the fragile smile on Elsa's face arrested her ability to do anything besides stare at her stupidly. She'd dressed in a hurry that morning, leaving her blouse unbuttoned at the throat. Her hair wasn't wound up properly, still falling in rumpled, shimmering folds down past her shoulders. . .

"I hope it stays frozen," Elsa said, her gaze shifting past Anna to the window. "When I leave the room, it might start to melt. . ."

Anna thought about asking if she wouldn't rather just remove the ice window, but it was too pretty to remove. The pale sunlight played a hundred different colors _through_ it and across it at the same time; pinks and lavenders and blues and pale yellows. She loved Elsa's magic. She'd have loved to live in Elsa's ice castle if it hadn't been quite so cold. And slippery.

"What time is it?" Elsa asked, glancing, distracted, around the room. Then Anna noticed that little drifts of snow had piled against the furniture's feet, and how the bedclothes shimmered with ice. Elsa hadn't full-on frozen everything, but she'd done enough to tell Anna that her sister had been worrying herself for some time.

Anna's heart ached for her. Elsa had sat in here, alone, sprinkling the furniture with snow and creating the window, waiting for her, because she wouldn't. . .

Wait, Elsa had said she'd broken the window. How?

"What happened? To the window."

Elsa's face in that moment was so open and vulnerable that it was all Anna could do not to hug her as hard as she was able. But then Elsa was drawing back into herself, reminding Anna of the way clouded ice crawled across the things she touched when she was afraid. It hurt to watch, a pain that burrowed into her heart, but she couldn't talk Elsa out of it. She smiled instead, because sometimes Elsa smiled back.

Not this time. Elsa dropped her gaze. "It was nothing."

Anna felt her smile slipping. _Don't get upset,_ she told herself. _Whatever it was, it scared her._

She reached for Elsa's hand. Elsa stiffened at first, but her eyes darted up to Anna's face, and beneath the brittle attempt at calm, Anna could see her hope.

"Tell me?" she asked.

Elsa's chest hitched with her breath. "I had a nightmare," she whispered.

Anna blinked. Then she blinked again. She opened her mouth, then closed it.

"I know." Elsa pulled away, pacing across the carpet, pressing powdery footprints where she stepped. "I didn't—I've never had one before. How it's possible—"

"It just scared you, is all," Anna said. "I've had some so bad—well, you remember the one from just a few days ago."

"It was him." Elsa pressed the heels of her hands against her temples. "Kleykir. I had a nightmare—about him."

 _Oh._ Anna felt a surge of relief, then a prickling of guilt. Ohh, no. This was her fault—her fault for bringing him up. He'd frightened Elsa for years, hadn't he? She'd learned about him as a child, when she'd been locked away from everyone for fear of hurting them. She'd read about him like that—read obsessively about a man who'd given Anna nightmares, as a grown woman, after she'd read about him _once_.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have brought him up."

Elsa shot her a look that was very nearly exasperated. "How is it your fault?"

"Well, I reminded you of him—"

"Anna. . ." Elsa paused. Her eyes strayed toward the window again, though they seemed to be looking at something far beyond the ice.

"He has always been at the back of my mind," she said quietly. "He lives in my blood. My powers. . . are his."

The distant look on her face, the weight in her voice—Anna did not like it at all. "But you _aren't_ him."

Elsa shook herself; a delicate, queenly twitch of her shoulders. "I know. I do."

 _Do you?_ Anna wondered.

Elsa pressed her palm against the pale triangle of skin visible at her throat, where the neck of her shirt opened. Anna tried not to stare, but Elsa had a beautiful collarbone. It was a bit of a weird thing to find so attractive, but it was the truth.

"I need to get dressed," Elsa said.

"Do you. . . need help?" she asked as Elsa stepped in front of her mirror.

"I can manage," she said, but there was affection in her voice. "Thank you," she added, glancing at Anna over her shoulder in the mirror as she iced her collar into place. Elsa didn't need any starch to get her collar to stand up straight.

That was just so. . . _neat_ , Anna thought, with an admiring little sigh.

For the daily demands of the throne, Elsa didn't wear her spectacular ice dress; but neither did she dress like before. She favored straight-cut gowns nipped high at the waist, with collars that opened at the throat but stood high and sharp, and an over-robe that pooled behind her on the floor. It was both severe and daring. As a queen, she could not appear frivolous, but neither (she'd told Anna) did she wish to seem demure. "I am a queen," she'd said. "Not a maiden or a child. I must look the part."

"What do princesses need to look like?" Anna had asked worriedly, because there was powdered sugar on her skirt, from Sven knocking a lemon cake onto her lap during their picnic lunch.

Elsa's put-on haughty expression had softened. "Like you," she'd said, and smiled; and for a few crazy seconds Anna had considered never washing her skirt ever again, because Elsa apparently liked it that way.

Elsa's shirt today was stark white, the dress the color of the bay beyond the frozen window, the over-robe the same deep, deep blue as the winter sky at dusk. Her expression as she wound her hair into place was serious, striving for tranquility.

The ice window was beautiful, glittering to life in the sun, but it was nothing next to Elsa.

Anna's face burned as she heard her memory-self stuttering out all those stupid questions. Elsa had looked surprised, faintly amused, understanding, compassionate. She'd already known, of course. It had been one of Anna's many surprises, finding that Elsa was so clever, so well-read. Books could be very nice, but Anna would rather have been climbing a tree or fighting imaginary pirates or falling in lo—well.

"Well?" Elsa asked, turning for inspection. "Will I do?"

Anna couldn't answer right away; her heart was too full. Elsa's smile was quiet, but luminous, as if like the ice she could throw off a hundred different shades of light, each one more perfect than the last.

"You're amazing," Anna blurted. Elsa raised her eyebrows, but she laughed softly. "N-no, really! Everyone's got to do what you tell them, just from—" _Falling in love with you whenever you walk into a room._

"The counselors have rather more restraint than you," Elsa said, but her eyes crinkled with her smile and Anna was not offended one bit. Besides, it was true.

Elsa's eyes fell on the window again, and her smile melted away. Anna couldn't take it anymore. She stepped forward, her shoes crunching on the powdery snow, and hugged Elsa, trying to be only as happy and admiring as she should be.

"You'll do _great_ today." _Today and always._

"I'm not sitting on a war council, you know." Elsa's hand came up and rested against her back, cool through the wool of her dress. "But thank you."

She pressed the lightest of kisses to Anna's hair. Anna's heart leapt in her chest, like a bird trying to take flight.

 _Let go_ , she told her arms, which were as fiercely happy as could be. _You need to let go before it gets weird._

Several heartbeats too late, her mutinous arms released Elsa, who was giving her a curious but not an uncomfortable look.

"See you at lunch!" Anna squeaked, and beetled away.

Then she fled to the library and barricaded herself inside.

"Dummy!" she wailed to the echoing stacks. Offended, they chanted the same back at her. _Ummy-ummyd-ummy._

She wished those _blasted_ history books said what you were supposed to do when you found yourself unwittingly in l-love with your sister. For all their prim talk of brother-husbands and sister-wives, they were unhelpfully short of any useful details. In the old Arendelle, it seemed they had simply paired up and married off. Any romance, Elsa would no doubt tell her with that dry, affectionate look that was as good as rolling her eyes, wouldn't make it into the history books.

"Well, that's just _really_ unhelpful," Anna muttered.

"What's just _really_ unhelpful?"

Anna let out an undignified squawk and hurled a book toward the voice before she'd registered that it was familiar.

"I'm sorry!" she blurted in dismay.

". . . Ow." Kristoff peeled the book off his face. His nose was bright red where the book had squashed it, but otherwise he looked the same as the last time she'd seen him, at the end of autumn.

"You're back!" she cried, rushing over to him. He picked her up and swung her around, a feeling she loved; it was almost like flying. His smile was the same one she remembered, grinning up at her.

He set her on her feet again, and Anna hugged him. He smelled the same, too, like pine and frost.

"Well?" he asked, as she stepped back so she could look him over from hair to boots. "What's just-really-unhelpful? And where does a princess get an arm like that?"

"Oh, hush. And as for the unhelpful thing, it's that book I threw at you." She took it from his hand and glared at it, before stuffing it at random onto a shelf. "Never mind. How was your trip?"

"Long. Cold. Uneventful. Why are you reading books?" he asked, trying to reach behind her and pull it off the shelf.

"I was trying to read about magic," she said, backing against the shelf so he couldn't get at the book.

Well, she _had_ been, before she'd let herself get sucked into reading about the royal family, and had all her careful resignation to a period of pining after her sister, and _never_ telling _anyone_ , tossed about her ears.

"Ah." He studied her for a long moment, and she looked back at him, and saw. . . it. There was something different about him. She couldn't exactly place what it was, but _something_ , an invisible thing, hovered just where she couldn't see it.

Then he patted her on the head, his brown eyes full of that gentle understanding that she knew so well. "This is about your—the queen. Did something happen?"

"No, I just, I wish I knew more _about_ it." She frowned at the rows of just-really-unhelpful books. "But in all the stories—the ones I remember, anyway—magic never seems to be used for anything _good._ "

Elsa could do so much good; more good than anyone else in the world. Anna knew she could, if she would only believe it.

Kristoff put his large hand over her head and gently steered her forward. "Come on. You've been cooped up with books for too long, I can tell."

"I just got here," she protested.

"Were you here yesterday? Thought so. We're going for a walk."

A walk did sound nice. "All right, all right. But I'd like to be back to meet Elsa for lunch, okay?"

"As her highness commands."

Anna elbowed him, grinning.

"I _missed_ you," she said, as they walked between broad patches of early spring sunlight that fell through the palace windows. "You'll have lunch with us, won't you? Elsa will want to see you're back."

"As her highness commands."

"I do," she said primly, earning herself a smile.

After a brief detour for Anna to collect her cloak, they met Sven at the gate, and he affectionately rubbed her shoulder with his muzzle (careful to keep from poking her with his antlers). The three of them struck out across the causeway, making the circuit beyond the town. Anna loved walking through Arendelle, greeting everyone and interesting herself in the details of their day, but Kristoff didn't take the same enjoyment from it. Like Elsa, he preferred to be alone, with Sven (well, _that_ was pure Kristoff) or Anna. So they followed the meandering footpaths into the lower forest, leaving the bustle of the town behind, and enjoying each other's company in the clicks and trills and breath of the forest.

"How was it in the east?" she asked, walking with her hand warming on Sven's pelt. "You've got to tell me more than 'long, cold, uneventful.' I've never traveled at _all_ , you know. What was it like?"

"Not that different from this, really." He gazed up at the pines overhead. "There's trees, sky, snow. . . lots of trees, since lumber's their trade and that's what I went for, with the ice trade going the way it does in winter."

Kristoff had been very thankful for the post Elsa had created for him; but the Official Ice Master of Arendelle needed a public manner that Kristoff didn't have, any more than he had interest in forming one. A regular ice-seller could be as misanthropic as he pleased, but anyone Official had to have something more. Elsa hadn't been offended when he stepped down, though Anna had felt her own disappointment, and had missed him when he'd gone away for the winter. But when ice was plentiful, Kristoff was not, in fact, necessary. So he'd drifted away to the east, to wile away the winter in the lumber trade.

Anna wondered if that invisible-different-something was contentment. Kristoff got restless. He came to the city to sell ice, but was always gone again quite soon, and she did not think it was _entirely_ because he needed to sell more ice. She thought he liked it that way. And so while he would always hold a special place in her heart, they both knew their destiny was no more and no less than lifelong friendship.

"Kristo~ff," she wheedled now, because she knew when he was holding back.

But instead of growing more teasing, his mild smile dropped into something more serious.

"I'm early," he said. "Did you notice? By three weeks."

"Are you?" A tingle of alarm rippled through her . "Why? What happened?"

He glanced at her, then away, his eyes on the path for several long moments. Sven made a low noise in his throat, and Kristoff sighed.

"Fire," he said. "The east. . . is burning."

* * *

". . . whole villages, your majesty," said Counselor Olvir. "All burned to ash."

"The villagers?" Elsa asked.

"That is the odd thing, your majesty. Perhaps I should say, the odder thing," he said when she met his eye. "One would think they would flee south, take refuge in the city. . . but the majority are heading into the eastern mountains."

"They're _leaving_ Arendelle?"

"Yes, your majesty."

Elsa pictured the drawings she had seen of the Eastern Mountains, the jagged black slopes capped with ice, ten times as tall as the North Mountain that cradled the city and her palace in its shadow. "Surely that is a foolish venture. They're by far more likely to perish than to make it through to Belsegar."

"Yes, your majesty. We have not been able to determine what is driving them, or where and how the fires are originating."

"Hrodgir." She turned to the steward of the city. "Have we seen any refugees from these fires within the city?"

"No, your majesty. It is quite odd—one would expect them to come directly here, to ask for aid, yet they have been avoiding our royal outposts that would send word to us."

 _Avoiding royal outposts?_ "Who has brought the reports?" she asked, glancing around the table.

"Our scouts, your majesty," said Angnar, the warden, who ruled the scouts and soldiers who patrolled the kingdom's wilds. "They saw the fires from a distance, so large and great they were. My men went even into the ruins of the villages, but everything was gone, it was all kindling that was left. They found no survivors."

Elsa kept her hands where they touched none of the furniture. The face in her dream—the black beard flecked with snow, the aurora rippling behind him in pink and green and gold—tried to push to the front of her mind, to block out the concerned yet kindly faces of her counselors. She would not let it.

"We must learn the truth behind this," she said. "The next time we convene at this table, you will be able to tell me with certainty what has happened, so that we may do what we must to act."

"Your majesty," they chorused in overlapping voices. They stood when she did, and bowed as they filed from the room.

Elsa paced to the window, keeping her hands knit together in front of her. The nightmare—the fires—it seemed ludicrous that they could be connected; the fevered imaginings of a fearful brain. Kleykir had been driven from the city with a dozen arrows in his back, said the books, and his brother had buried the mountains of dead with no further challenge; not that day, nor for the rest of his days. All of that was three hundred years past. Her nightmare. . . was only a nightmare. It was no message, no warning, from the dead.

_But then why did you dream last night, when you have never dreamed before?_

And the fire. . .

She imagined ash blowing across the snow, the smoke rising in black columns through the air, as tall as the black mountains into which the people had fled. Winter there lived year-round, merciless and cruel. She knew as much, and she had never been to the east; the easterners should know that better even than herself. They would know it must be suicide.

What fear could have possessed them to take a road that would result in their deaths, as sure as if they'd stayed in their burning villages?

 _Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice_.

A fleck of snow struck her eyelash. Blinking it away, she turned, and saw snow dusting down from the ceiling, clouded ice crackling down the walls.

 _Thaw,_ she thought, her breath misting the air. _Thaw!_

The ice stayed where it was, though it did not advance. The snow stopped falling, but the piles did not disappear.

 _Anna._ She summoned her sister to her thoughts, standing in the light that shone on the window of ice in her room, saying, _It's beautiful_ , with a soft look of wonder, and then turning to smile at her, unafraid and happy.

With a wave of her arm, Elsa banished the ice and snow back into the air.

But the worry lay beneath her skin, like a layer of frost.

 _You can always come and get me, you know_ , Anna said, at least once a day. _If you need me._

Elsa let herself out of the council room, releasing the door handle quickly, before it could freeze.

Anna was not in her room, nor in the library, kitchens, or informal dining-room. This wasn't unusual; Anna loved to be outdoors, in the city especially, now that the gates were always open. But it was nearly time for the midday meal, and Anna always met her for that. Elsa would simply have to wait.

 _Some say the world will end in fire_ , _some say in ice._

She shook her head angrily, trying to dispel the words. A stupid little poem that she'd read as a girl.

She paced to the dining-room window, and saw, with a pulse of deep-hearted relief, Anna's flame-bright hair in the courtyard below.

_From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire._

"Shut _up_ ," she whispered fiercely, her breath raising shimmering spikes on the glass.

She dashed them away and strode from the room, trying to calm herself. The staff would see her angry, and she did not want anyone to see her angry. When she became angry. . .

_But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate, to say that for destruction ice is also great. . .  
_

_And would suffice._

* * *

"That's horrible," Anna said as she, Kristoff, and Sven headed back along the causeway toward the palace. "All those poor people. . ."

"Yeah." Kristoff's gaze, as he looked across the gleaming water, was as faraway as Elsa's had been that morning.

Anna bit her lip. "I'm sorry I made you—"

"Hey." He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. "It's your kingdom, you have every right to ask about it."

". . . Oh," Anna said, as something occurred to her.

"What?" he asked, catching sight of her expression.

"It's just. . . Elsa didn't tell me." That made her feel—small. She must be a terrible princess, if Elsa felt she couldn't tell her any of this.

"She probably didn't want to worry you."

"But shouldn't she? Shouldn't I know? She shouldn't have to do everything alone."

Kristoff looked as if he really wished he hadn't brought it up. "Maybe, but—look, all I'm saying is, just ask her. I don't know how kingdoms are run, but she probably has a good reason."

 _'What are princesses supposed to be like?'_ she'd asked Elsa, with powdered sugar on her skirt, after she'd spent all afternoon at a picnic while Elsa had been running the kingdom. And she hadn't known about the royal family, or the previous ice sorcerer, or any of it. And Elsa had called Anna her heir only last night.

Maybe Anna ought to try acting like it.

"Hey," Kristoff said again. He looped his arm companionably around her shoulders, giving them a squeeze. "Don't worry so much. Your sister does enough of that for both of you. I mean," he winced, "the queen."

"Then I ought to take some of it on. I _am_ the heir, you know." She said it to lighten the mood, but it made her think: _An heir is the person who takes over if something happens to the queen. Like Elsa took over when our parents. . ._

She shivered, feeling like a breath of north wind had just passed through her clothes. _Please not Elsa. Please NEVER Elsa._

"Let's just go up to lunch," Kristoff said. "And have the most depressing lunchtime conversation in, oh, ever."

"Right." She made herself smile. "I do love lunchtime."

Except that for once, she didn't feel hungry.

"Where are the people going? The ones who lost their village, I mean?" she asked as the shadow of the palace gates enfolded them. "I haven't noticed anyone new in the city. . ." Had she been that blind? But she knew practically everyone by this point, from the ancient cobbler who lived out on the quay to Lady Katla's new baby, only two days old.

"I don't know—Sven and me came back down south, but no one came with us."

Anna frowned. Something about that that didn't sound right at all.

"You. You must. . . be the princess."

The voice was weak and wavering, but it still had the power to slice through their conversation like a breath of cold wind.

A woman, stooped and aging, stood a pace in front of them. She was gray, entirely gray: her body was swathed in a gray cloak, and scraggly gray hair hung matted around her lined face. Her skin had no healthy glow to it; the opposite, in fact; and her colorless eyes looked exhausted, even. . . haunted.

Anna had never seen such misery encased in one person. Tears sprung to her eyes. She knew, beyond a doubt, that this woman had lost everything she'd loved. If Kristoff's different-thing was invisible, like a shape she could only glimpse from the corner of her eye, this woman's unhappiness was as clear as a storm gathering thunderheads on the horizon.

But she held back her tears. She _was_ the princess, and she wouldn't cry in front of someone who so clearly needed her help.

"You've come from the east, haven't you?" she asked.

Something flickered in the depths of the woman's eyes. "You are the princess," she said quietly, in a voice that made Anna of. . . ashes. Something inside Anna shuddered.

The gray woman looked into Anna's eyes for a long moment. . . and then held out her hands. They were trembling. Anna stepped toward her, reaching out, wanting to touch her and yet somehow afraid to. Beside her, Kristoff said nothing, but he radiated uneasiness. She could _feel_ his desire to step between her and this gray woman; it couldn't have been clearer if he'd said _Wait, Anna._

But Anna would help her. She had to. For the first time she could see a light in the woman's eyes, in response to her gesture. . .

Wait, was she seeing things? She had to be seeing things. People's eyes didn't just suddenly _glow_.

"I am sorry," the gray woman whispered, stretching out her hands as if to cup Anna's face.

Then Anna saw something even stranger: a red-orange light was glowing, growing, in the center of her chest, where her heart would be.

And her hands, brushing Anna's face, were as red and hot as if they were lit within by fire.

"Anna!" Kristoff shouted, his hands landing on her upper arms, pulling her away. The gray woman lunged forward, her hands clapping to Anna's face, and Anna cried out as they seared, burning oh God it _hurt_ —the woman's eyes in her face were engulfed in fire—

And then a jet of icy blue erupted in the air, striking the woman from behind—

And she exploded in a pile of ash.

Anna fell back into Kristoff's arms, the skin of her cheeks pulsing with agony. Numbly she lifted her eyes toward the palace doors, where Elsa stood, her arm out-flung, her face a bloodless white, and flakes of ash blowing on the wind.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -I found the names for Elsa's counselors on Irminsul Aettir Archives (irminsul.org)


End file.
